Hi all, I have a pretty new laptop with Mint 18.3 Sylvia and the firewall here, not on the server yet, and a shared printer (works firewall on or off) and a shared folder on an older XFCE Sarah box using SAMBA for both because other laptops are Windows. With the firewall off I can browse the "Windows" network and send/receive files from the Sarah box. With it on I was getting "cannot mount- no list from server" so I searched and discovered rules to fit SAMBA are pre-configured and added them to the firewall successfully, first out only, then in also. The only change was the error message which now says zero items instead of can't mount. Again, the firewall is not on the box with the share, it's on the machine I want to access the share from! Firewall off it works just fine read/write to Sarah box, firewall on (ufw standard) I cannot make it work with any advice I've found so far. Ideas anyone- not afraid of terminal. Thanks.

Last edited by Peterjack on Sat Feb 03, 2018 10:26 am, edited 1 time in total.

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I am using Mint 18.3 Cinnamon 64 bit with AMD processor . Memory 8GB

I appreciate the link, and I read all posts there. I installed [Postby altair4 » Fri Jul 01, 2016 10:59 am "Just install everything terminal code"] and my machine was missing a lot of packages, but I still can't connect, though about to reboot and try again. Still, all the info I've gathered is surely going to help when I do complete the work on my home server box.

However, for all that read my problem a reminder that it is my client machine (Sylvia) that won't connect with the XCFE Sarah machine shared folder which does not yet have the firewall enabled, it is just being configured- and yet all the various editions of Windows can, and so can my second XCFE Sarah install.

Sylvia (the client) Firewall off, connect fine, firewall on regardless of added SAMBA rules in and out, will not connect. Thanks for any and all help!

But before you do that you are talking about one Linux machine connecting to another another Linux machine with samba correct? The bug at askubuntu deals with a netbios / firewall incompatibility. You don't have to use netbios - or any other Windows name resolution protocol - when going from Linux to Linux using Samba.

@altair4 You're a GENUIS! The link you provided was the solution for making Network Browse work with Firewall On which is what I wanted. Immediately after running the first suggested terminal command the view in Files/Network displayed an icon of the server host box like on every other machine but this one until the fix. Read/Write just fine! Why a Linux to Linux Samba share was so hard, I don't know.

Question: I then added the iptables persistent option suggestion, and yes, it still works after reboot, but now I'm thinking there could be a negative from that down the road maybe? My question: Better to undo iptables persist and instead run the first command in startup?

Question: I then added the iptables persistent option suggestion, and yes, it still works after reboot, but now I'm thinking there could be a negative from that down the road maybe? My question: Better to undo iptables persist and instead run the first command in startup?

Don't know which one is a better approach. You won't be able to run the command as a "startup application " because of the sudo but you could run it in /etc/rc.local is suppose - also without the sudo. And you can always undo the iptables-persist thing later if there's an issue.

Why a Linux to Linux Samba share was so hard, I don't know.

Ubuntu 17.10 fixed the problem by finally implementing something Samba told them to do years ago. The second link in my original post talks about adding an avahi service announcement for samba on all your linux boxes. That's what Ubuntu 17.10 will do to itself automatically in a more elegant way.

This method doesn't use port 137. It uses port 445 as does macOS and Windows. It's unaffected by this odd kernel / iptables bug.

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